Functional ultrasound imaging in free-moving marmosets reveals that intra-call prosodic features modulate large-scale cortical dynamics

Disrupting intra-call phrase sequences in free-moving marmosets increases activity in auditory and para-insular cortices and strengthens inter-subject connectivity within that network.

• Why it matters: Vocal turn-taking depends on sequential and rhythmic timing, but it is unclear how primate cortex integrates these prosodic features across timescales during natural, unconstrained behavior.
• What they did: The team built functional ultrasound imaging for free-moving marmosets, using an exogenous marker-based registration workflow and preprocessing tuned to reduce locomotion artifacts, then perturbed phee call structure across hierarchical timescales.
• The result: Phrase-sequence changes selectively modulated auditory–para-insular dynamics, while rhythmic timing mainly targeted core auditory cortex, with shorter inter-phrase intervals enhancing responses and longer intervals suppressing them.

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